Beatles news from Steve Marinucci, a journalist with over three decades of experience in the newspaper business and a contributing writer to Billboard and AXS.com and co-host of the Beatles radio show Things We Said Today heard weekly on podbean.com, iTunes and Fab 4 Radio.com.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Magazine alerts: John, Paul, George and even some Ringo

UNCUT

Two recent magazines, one of which you'll want to get, the other you won't.

"The History of Rock 1971," out of England, continues the series that uses the archives of NME and Melody Maker. Besides the pic of John Lennon on the cover, the inside has a Lennon interview promoting the "Imagine" album and doing some trashing of McCartney. ("The thing with Paul, he wants all the action. He wants it all. It's not just the money. It's the principle.") He also defends Phil Spector's work on the "Let It Be." ("I'm glad the bootleg is going about, because it shows that Paul was wrong when he was putting down Spector. All he was trying to do was put down the album, because he was out then.") He's also asked if he and Yoko planned to play in the Concert for Bangladesh. ("That's George, but I won't be there because we have to go to the Virgin Islands to go to court about Kyoko.")

And there's a McCartney interview from that year with Macca hitting back. "He can't say all I did was 'Yesterday' because it's not true," the headline says. He also talks about "Let It Be." ("I said it was a new phase Beatles album and nothing was further from the truth.") Great pic from the year with Denny Seiwell, Linda, Paul and Denny Laine, too. There are also short items about the Concert for Bangladesh, George Harrison's copyright suit, Ringo calling McCartney a "spoilt child" and rumors that McCartney was going to sign with Robert Stigwood. The 150 page book also has stories on the Stones, the Faces, the Band, David Bowie, T. Rex ("We did get all that Beatlemania stuff," says Marc Bolan), Fleetwood Mac (pre-Buckingham & Nicks), Elton John and more. We love this series and like the rest of them, it's a good pickup. You can get it here.

Then there's the current (March 7) National Enquirer, which has among its sleazy cover headlines an ugly story about Paul McCartney. We won't go into the details, but if you really need to see it, go read it on the newsstand (it's on page 34). Don't bother to buy. It's tabloid trash.